Despite the urging and friendly Yoo-Hoo’s of others to come back out to play, I have dug my heels in and looked away.

In fact, I have a confession to make. Please forgive me y’all. I’ve been avoidant of reading the other bloggesses blogs as well.

Truth is, way back yonder in December I promised I’d be back soon. And “soon” by any stretch of the definition well, “soon” has done come and gone. And I still sit here, avoidant.

At first I thought I just needed a little break. I really loved writing my lil blog every week, and kinda got to where it was a part of me. Initially, it felt good to empty out the trash can, and to spill out the rummage left behind in my head by cancer. I felt humbly, that I had figured out why I was still here. At first.

My little über analyzing brain has tried and tried to figure out what’s up with the delay of my return to the blogosphere. After a year of writing about the ick and nonsense and cancer drama, I can only describe to you more what I didn’t feel than what I did.

What I didn’t feel anymore was the gratification of the purge; I didn’t feel the expected satisfaction of succinctly tying up so many loose ends and setting them free. At the end of it, I no longer felt the organized glee of putting them all into neatly categorized drawers and boxes and sliding the drawers shut.

No, I didn’t feel the satisfaction of the emptied attic. It left me with nothing to do with my hands. And really, what’s the point of being the crazy old woman in the attic if there is no fodder, if there are no chests to open and frantically grab and wildly throw the contents about while screaming about cancer?

The empty space, albeit peaceful, haunted me more some days than a head chock full of trauma bits.

I mean, who was I if I wasn’t the girl with cancer? What should I do with a mind born to dissect and analyze everything to death when there was thankfully, no apparent death to analyze?

Perhaps (I entertained but for only a moment) I am a tad histrionic after all, thriving on drama and needing crisis to feel like I was alive, forever needing something to do with my racing mind and hands. Perhaps it’s why the stillness, which I did not really resent, felt odd.

What I felt was nothing. Not good or bad, not relief or angst. Nothing. A void. An absence of something that had taken up a whole lot of space. Emptiness where the cancer was, a big empty attic previously taken up by the cancer.

And a reluctance to refill the room with those thoughts again.

Early on in my cancer diagnosis, I was sitting in Grandmother Willow’s office. This was shortly after the dirty little secret of breast cancer was whispered in my ear; that the trick is not it getting rid of it the first time, but in keeping it away. Grandmother Willow was trying to stem my rapidly racing thoughts as they made loop after loop, trying to assure me that one day this cancer would all seem an afterthought.

Because I can sometimes be a Little Miss Know It All, I often tend to call bullshit on theories that don’t match up with my picture of the world, and that day was no different. I remember thinking maybe she was the crazy old lady in the attic because I could see nothing but a life from here on in with the grim reaper as my constant traveling companion, forever bound like members of a chain gang with his endless whisper distracting me for eternity.

I distinctly remember her telling me about woman who recently came to see her who, after a whole first session of spilling her current emotional history said, “And oh yeah, and I had breast cancer ten years ago.” “Oh yeah,” like she had forgotten about it. “Oh yeah,” like it was an afterthought.

“Bullshit,” I thought.

Sitting bald and frightened on her couch, it seemed inconceivable that cancer would one day take up so little room in my life; that it would become such a non entity in my identity. That in the game board of Lauren’s life, cancer would become such a non player in my current emotions on any given future day.

Yet, this is how I have felt these last months. I have felt the absence of cancer.

After years of thinking about nothing but cancer, I have somehow managed to get to where it is not part of the complexion of my being. One day last week, a neighbor stopped to tell me she had gotten her port out that morning. I felt this blankness when she said it, not lack of empathy, but more a situation where I was unable to summon the empathy because I had forgotten how it felt to be in her shoes. I knew she must feel relief, but I couldn’t feel the taste of it in my mouth anymore. When I started to try to remember what I had blogged about ports, I couldn’t even remember what I had written. All I could remember was how hilarious it was that Wendy had made hers into a daisy.

When I went back to read that blog, I swear to you, it was as if someone else had written it. Sometimes this happens with my mom; I can’t remember what she looked like until I look at pictures, and then I am surprised at features in her face that I forgot.

I was detached from cancer. Detached from the chain gang.

Years ago, big surprise, I had to take Concerta for my ADD. With that drug, the thought of food and hunger vanished. I’m not saying I wasn’t hungry or my appetite was curbed, I am saying that the thought of food no longer crossed my mind. I’d be sitting there feeling faint and go, “Oh, yeah, I haven’t eaten in two days.” This little pill took away the emotion and rituals and grooves in my brain that were attached to food and eating; it eliminated the craving and the timing and desire to indulge in this so familiar and daily ritual.

This little blog did the same with cancer. I don’t indulge in cancer much these days. But, it’s not healthy to not need food, nor is healthy to avoid part of your being.

I remember reading how Lance was in an doctor’s office finding out he was just covered with cancer. It seemed insurmountable, yet a few days later after he talked to doctor after doctor about what each intended to do with each and every metastasis he proclaimed, “We had talked this thing down to size.”

Blog by blog, a bite of the proverbial elephant (or grim reaper) at a time, I too had talked the memories and trauma, the cancer down to size.

While the bell can never be un-rung, somehow, somehow….swirling my pen around in the well un-cast the dye. Like a magnet, my pen pulled the dye cast long ago from the water, bringing it from pink to very, very pale, almost indiscernible pink.

Perhaps I lived my way into (at least some of) the answers.

Perhaps I am just reluctant, not avoidant. Perhaps I am detached; not sure that I want to re-attach, or how to re-attach without it filling the room up again.

Perhaps, I have just moved seamlessly, as we do with grief, into acceptance.

Perhaps, I have indeed outlived it.

So in these last months, my life has been filled with all the stuff of teenagers. Colleges visits, college apps, obsessing about the right high school and college choices, proms and dances, driving lessons, graduation preparations for two and undergoing some good old-fashioned teenaged drama teaching me I better grow some thick skin real fast. (Suddenly, I have become a whole lot less smart and a whole lot less funny.) My pop survived another wicked pneumonia, and Scout is still the best dog ever made at the dog factory. Through all of this, I have worn some very good friends down with my new looping obsession; my anticipatory grief that life is gonna change real soon as the kids and people and dogs I love fly away. But in all this, we are busy, busy, busy here at the ranch distracted by life not death; indeed life is moving forward at warp speed.

I am SO glad you are back, Lauren. I have really missed your writing. How fascinating to know that you find yourself in a different place, I am warmed to hear that. I also find that writing has helped me to process such a lot of this cancer stuff, like downloading it from my head and offloading it from my shoulders. Thank you for a beautiful post.
Philippa

I think nothingness and acceptance are great places to be. And they take their own sweet time. I feel like my own blogging is slowly re-purposing itself. Most of the time, I don’t worry about and just trust the process. We’re all in a constant state of becoming, aren’t we? Thanks for writing about this. It’s always good to read your thoughts.

Great insights here, Lauren. Perhaps you have lived and written your way into some kind of acceptance. If so, that’s great. We are all a continuous work in progress and in a constant state of “becoming” as Kathi mentioned in her comment. Write when you are moved to write. Selfishly speaking, I hope it’s often, but…hey, do what feels right for you! We readers can be patient.

Lauren! Welcome baaaaack! I have missed your lovely writing too! What you did was very brave: You unplugged. And when you replugged, you found the outlet was different. I think that is a very cool thing.

Though I’ve only been at this a year, I know what you mean about revisiting stuff you’ve written and not recognizing it. I was re-reading some of my early posts and thought, Thank God I wrote this while it was still fresh, because I no longer remember this level of detail. (Thank you Tamoxifen.) To me, that is the beauty of the blog. We leave a little piece of us behind each time we post. A part maybe we no longer need. It’s like we put our thoughts on a raft and push them out to sea for others to munch on if they need to.

From grief to acceptance…what a beautiful thing. You, my sweet friend, have been my guide & mentor in the “after” part of cancer. Reading about you putting cancer into the afterthought category is fantastic! I’m so happy for you, and eagerly await the time in which cancer is no longer a part of the complexion of my being, too. You give me lots of hope.

I’m thrilled!! that you are back, Lauren. What a rocky road it has been for you. But I totally “get” your absence. It’s been nine years since my last diagnosis, and I, too, wanted to forget. I couldn’t remember what chemo or ports or nausea was, and didn’t want to. But I slowly got back the empathy, the feeling that I needed to share, that others needed to know there are long-term survivors out there. Welcome back, and keep writing! xx

Hello Lauren – it’s totally understandable why you’ve taken your sweet time in returning to the blog & all things cancer. Personally I write for a blog at FacingCancer.ca, and there have been times when I’ve wondered: “what can I say? I’m moving on?” . . . but in the end there’s always something to be said. Half the time it’s not even about cancer, but just the privlidge of living beyond that diagnosis.

Those college applications sound exciting. Enjoy and read you later, whenever you feel like it. 😉